Cbus, meanwhile, will double down on partnering with sophisticated investment organizations in pursuing big overseas deals, as opposed to establishing overseas offices as some of Australia's biggest super funds have done in recent years.
Mr. Fok, said in the news release that Cbus "was at an advantage in being able to use existing teams to search for value without the need for costly and potentially risky investments in global assets," adding that overseas bases "would provide limited value at this point in time."
And even as Cbus has remained an active player in the industry consolidation Australian regulators have welcomed in recent years as a means of ensuring funds have the scale needed to offer workers solid investment returns at reasonable fees, Mr. Fok said Cbus' current scale provides the fund with a range of options that bigger and smaller funds alike might find hard to match.
"At this point, we are in a sweet spot where we are big enough that few deals are too large and few deals are too small. This gives us great flexibility and makes us an attractive investment partner in a number of sectors," Mr. Fok said.
On Monday, Cbus and EISS Super, a Sydney-based superannuation fund with A$5.3 billion ($3.6 billion) in retirement assets, announced the completion of their previously announced merger, increasing Cbus' portfolio assets to more than A$80 billion — or less than half the retirement assets overseen by top industry funds, including A$290 billion AustralianSuper, Melbourne, and A$240 billion Australian Retirement Trust, Brisbane.
Brett Chatfield, Cbus' acting chief investment officer, said in the same news release that "extracting alpha will be critical going forward given broad market returns are likely to be more muted."
As for Cbus' new goal for bringing management of assets in-house, Mr. Chatfield said the superannuation fund's team remains "agnostic as to where the next 12% of internalization will come from."
For the five years through June 2022, the news release reported total investment fee savings for participants of A$512 million "through activities such as internal strategies, external manager renegotiations and asset allocation refinements."
Cbus spokesman Tristan Douglas couldn't immediately be reached for further comment.
